Trump trial live: Former ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen expected to testify Monday in hush money case
After bombshell testimony from Stormy Daniels, Trump ignored reporters questions about her challenge for him to testify too
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Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial has resumed at Manhattan Criminal Court following Thursday’s fiery testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels.
Madeleine Westerhout, Mr Trump’s “gatekeeper” and former director of Oval Office operations during his presidential administration, who on Thursday cried on the stand as she fondly recalled her time working for him, concluded her testimony this morning.
Ms Daniels’ time on the stand saw her spar with defense attorney Susan Necheles over alleged inconsistencies in her various tellings of the sexual encounter she alleges she had with Mr Trump in 2006. She remained calm, firm, and unflappable in her account.
Also on Thursday, Judge Juan Merchan rejected a further mistrial motion from the defense and denied a request that the gag order imposed on Mr Trump be lifted to allow him to respond to Ms Daniels, who later derided the defendant on Twitter by declaring that “real men” testify.
Ex-Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen is set to appear on Monday for his highly anticipated testimony.
Alex Woodward is covering Mr Trump’s trial in Manhattan and will be providing regular updates on proceedings.
Lara Trump: Former president will accept election results ‘if’ he feels they are fair
Is she ever off the TV these days?
Seriously though, this is disturbing and should be taken at face value.
Trump turns to oil industry for $1bn towards campaign
The Republican candidate solicited a $1bn donation from oil executives during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month, a new report reveals
Oil executives met with Trump to discuss environmental regulations when the former president vowed to reverse many of President Joe Biden’s policies if elected, The Washington Post reports.
He then asked for a $1bn donation to his 2024 presidential campaign from the attendees, according to the outlet.
Katie Hawkinson has more details.
Trump turns to oil industry for $1bn as they draft executive orders for him
The call for donations comes after Mr Trump struggled to make a bond payment in New York earlier this year
Jim Mattis called Trump ‘a madman in a circular room screaming’
Away from the courtroom (briefly), Trump’s one-time secretary of defense, Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, has, rather brilliantly, described the former president as “a madman in a circular room screaming”, according to a new book.
The quote comes via Tom Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser from 2017 to 2018, and is carried in the forthcoming hardback The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis.
The new book from journalists George Stephanopolous and Lisa Dickey (the former, in particular, hated by Trump) discusses the history of presidential crises since John F Kennedy and is set to be published next week.
Katie Hawkinson reports.
Jim Mattis described Trump as ‘a madman in a circular room screaming’, book reveals
Jim Mattis resigned as Mr Trump’s first defense secretary after the president withdrew troops from Syria in 2018
New York civil fraud case: Trump’s trial judge under investigation over unsolicited advice to attorney
Remember that other Big Apple court case involving the Republican presidential candidate?
No, not E Jean Carroll. The other one. The one that ended with Trump being found liable for the illegal inflation of Trump Organization assets and fined $355m plus $110m in interest and asked to place a $175m bond.
Well, the presiding justice, Judge Arthur Engoron, is now under investigation by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct after a New York real estate attorney claimed he gave him unsolicited advice ahead of the multi-million-dollar ruling.
Here’s Kelly Rissman to explain.
Trump’s fraud trial judge faces probe after attorney claims he advised him on case
Attorney Adam Leitman Bailey claimed he spoke to Judge Arthur Engoron three weeks before he made his final judgment in the former president’s case
Live: Donald Trump’s hush money trial continues at Manhattan Criminal Court
Here’s our latest livestream from New York.
New York hush money trial: Trump attack dog Habba complains about media ‘snarking’
Alina Habba rebuked some high-profile correspondents on Fox last night for enjoying themselves at Trump’s trial but (just about) stopped herself from going after the jury too, having commenced a dicey diatribe about their alleged giggling.
On the same channel (where else?), Daniels came under fire from the likes of Jeanine Pirro and Laura Ingraham, with self-awareness in short supply from the pundits.
Truth Social: Trump attacks George Conway after he labels cross-examination ‘complete disaster and a fiasco’
The lawyer ex-husband of Kellyanne Conway is unlikely to let this one pass without retaliation. To be fair to him, he looks like he was taken hostage by his wife in the first one.
Incredibly, a live, hard copy version of this petty attack apparently took place in court yesterday!
The defendant was presumably not too happy to catch an undeterred Conway’s dismantling of his lawyers’ performance against Stormy Daniels on CNN last night.
New York hush money trial: What else did we learn yesterday?
A few miscellaneous points from Alex Woodward below on details we heard for the first time on Thursday:
- Karen McDougal is not testifying. Trump’s team tried to file a motion about the former Playboy model, but it appeared to be bait to get prosecutors to say whether she will make an appearance. She won’t.
- Does dinner mean food? Defense attorneys spent several minutes interrogating Stormy Daniels about what she meant when she said “dinner” with Trump.
- Doing porn for a living means you shouldn’t be surprised when a nearly naked man more than twice your age asks for sex, according to Trump’s attorneys.
- Susan Necheles entered the phrase “orange turd” into the record several times, quoting a tweet from Daniels responding to someone calling her a toilet: “Pretty sure that it’s hyperbole, if someone calls me a toilet, that I can flush somebody,” she replied. “I’m also not a toilet.”
- The Republican National Committee had “conversations” about “how to replace him as a candidate if it came to that” after the Access Hollywood tape, Madeleine Westerhout said.
- Judge Merchan was stunned that defense attorneys totally fumbled their cross examination of Daniels by either forgetting or declining to object to parts of her testimony – particularly her multiple references to the fact that Trump didn’t wear a condom: “That shouldn’t have come out. I wish that didn’t come out… For the life of me I don’t know why she didn’t object.”
New York hush money trial: What to expect on Day 15
Here’s the latest from Alex Woodward outside Manhattan Criminal Court once more:
“We’re at the end of a third week of witness testimony and nearly a full month of Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan.
“There are roughly seven days left in the prosecution’s self-appointed countdown clock in the case against Trump, and a shrinking pool of witnesses to fill in the gaps.
“Stormy Daniels – whose grim account of having sex with Trump in a 2006 hotel room is partially the reason we’re all here – testified for nearly seven hours over two days, coming to a climax with the defense’s aggressive suggestions that she lied about and extorted from the former president to enrich herself. But the adult film star wasn’t buying it, and she fired quick-witted answers right back at Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles.
“Her time on the stand went so badly for Trump’s team that his attorneys once again tried, and failed, to get a mistrial, arguing that her testimony was too damaging for jurors to separate her vivid details from the facts of the case.
“Prosecutors on Thursday argued that those very same ‘messy details’ explain exactly what Trump sought to hide in the hush money scheme, giving jurors the full and proper context to understand why a presidential candidate would want to bury her allegations in the weeks before Election Day, and then cover it up in his company’s accounting.
“We’ll finish hearing more about that accounting paper trail on Friday morning when former White House aide Madeleine Westerhout returns to the stand. On Thursday, she explained how she handed FedEx packages full of personal checks for Trump to sign while he was in office – including the reimbursements to Michael Cohen at the heart of this case.
“Cohen himself is due to make his debut on the stand as soon as today, but we’re all still in the dark about the order of witnesses. He is expected to link all the events described by witnesses and documents thus far: how we handled ‘catch-and-kill’ for Trump, his negotiations with Daniels’ attorney, setting up a shell company to wire her money, and then pleading with Trump to pay him back, in a scheme to cover up his payments as ‘legal expenses’ to cover it all up.”
Trump says Jewish people should be ‘ashamed’ to vote for Biden
Before Trump even entered the courtroom yesterday, he took the opportunity to stoke controversy by declaring that Jewish American voters should be “ashamed” to cast their ballot for Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.
“What Biden is doing with respect to Israel is disgraceful,” he proclaimed.
“If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of themselves. He’s totally abandoned Israel and nobody can believe it.”
Katie Hawkinson reports.
Trump says Jewish people should be ‘ashamed’ to vote for Biden
Donald Trump’s remarks come after the president’s administration paused a shipment of bombs to Israel this week
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